I honestly believe Slack got big so fast because of their awesome awesome campaign advert. Just like the dollar shave club ad too.

Some startups forget that the first impression and cool factor still play a big role in creating a huge buzz about your app.

I can't speak for the other applications, but have you used Hipchat? It's really poor in comparison to Slack.

I preferred Skype instead of using Hipchat, that's how bad it was.

> I can't speak for the other applications, but have you used Hipchat? It's really poor in comparison to Slack.

You're splitting hairs. They are both chat apps for crying out loud.

Slack grew as fast as it did because it got pimped to us by VCs and thought leaders and then wannabe thought leaders and down all the way to the bottom rung of the societal ladder. Great strategy by Slack but there is nothing special about it (the product).

I wouldn't be so sure. Slack was just a better product overall, offering a clear interafce and much better integrations than Hipchat. Hipchat being slow did not impact them as much as having a mediocre product to begin with.

About Yammer, I wouldn't really put it in the same bucket as Slack, as it really tries to be a Facebook for your company, not a group chat.

HipChat came years before Slack.

Slack came very late and yet still managed to eat the others.

That seems like an argument against the idea that "being slow will kill you".

Slack is a way to common term to gather any information from these trend lines.

Ah yes, perhaps demand for spare rope went up substantially in 2014.

There is an existing baseline before Slack was released that you can take as a rough baseline.

It's true though - Hipchat was caught napping. Atlassian backburner'd it at exactly the wrong time, and by the time they starting fixing things, it was too late.

This being said, Atlassian isn't really a 'startup' anymore. Hipchat is a side-product of a suite of gorilla products.

I'll forever think slackware when I hear slack.

Nice surf move there